


Mortal Flaws, Fatal Sins

by orphan_account



Category: Star Wars, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: F/F, F/M, Gen, I made an OC out of an actual character, I'm just very bad at tagging but you get the drift, Kids, Like she just doesn't see the point, Maybe more POVs, Post-TLJ, Rey isn't as into the whole Resistance thing as we thought, Rey starts a school, Reylo - Freeform, She's Grey, She's not First Order though, Sort of AU, There's also reylo fluff, and maybe some smut, ben solo redemption, but not reylo kids, double pov, i guess, lots of theories and headcanons, shit happens
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-02-18
Updated: 2018-02-20
Packaged: 2019-03-20 16:02:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,683
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13721139
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: After the battle of Crait, the Resistance is scrambling to recruit new members, to bolster their ranks in preparation for when the First Order will strike again. They send Rey and Poe Dameron out to find members; instead of finding strong men and women willing to fight, Rey finds a young girl in need of help, only alive due to the First Order. Rey decides that maybe she doesn't want to fight for the Resistance, even if she doesn't care one way or the other about the First Order.Rey decides to start a school, a safe haven for children with incredible Force abilities and no idea how to wield them. Unlike with Luke's school, the children would be free to use whichever side of the Force they want as long as they don't get lost in it, as long as they don't harm others.During all of this, Rey's bond with Kylo Ren flourishes. Things they thought to be true come undone, lies are unwound, and truths are all too easily found out.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> So this is my new Reylo fic. I really shouldn't have started this considering I have like a million WIPs waiting for me to work on them, but I did. I hope to update at least once a week though the days will be random. I already have at least 7 chapters done, including this one, so at least I'm staying on top of things. Thanks for reading if you actually read my trash fanfic.
> 
> P.S. the title of the story comes from Beth Crowley's song Warrior. I just feel like it's such a Reylo song. Check it out!  
> Lyrics go:
> 
> You fascinated me  
> Cloaked in shadows and secrecy  
> The beauty of a broken angel
> 
> I ventured carefully  
> Afraid of what you thought I'd be  
> But pretty soon I was entangled
> 
> You take me by the hand  
> I question who I am
> 
> Teach me how to fight  
> I'll show you how to win  
> You're my mortal flaw  
> And I'm your fatal sin  
> Let me feel the sting  
> The pain  
> The burn  
> Under my skin
> 
> Put me to the test  
> I'll prove that I'm strong  
> Won't let myself believe  
> That what we feel is wrong  
> I finally see what  
> You knew was inside me  
> All along
> 
> That behind this soft exterior  
> Lies a warrior
> 
> My memory refused  
> To separate the lies from truth  
> And search the past  
> My mind created
> 
> I kept on pushing through  
> Standing resolute which you  
> In equal measure  
> Loved and hated
> 
> You take me by the hand  
> I'm seeing who I am
> 
> Teach me how to fight  
> I'll show you how to win  
> You're my mortal flaw  
> And I'm your fatal sin  
> Let me feel the sting  
> The pain  
> The burn  
> Under my skin
> 
> Put me to the test  
> I'll prove that I'm strong  
> Won't let myself believe  
> That what we feel is wrong  
> I finally see what  
> You knew was inside me  
> All along
> 
> That behind this soft exterior  
> Lies a warrior
> 
> Lies a warrior
> 
> You take me by the hand  
> I'm sure of who I am
> 
> Teach me how to fight  
> I'll show you how to win  
> You're my mortal flaw  
> And I'm your fatal sin  
> Let me feel the sting  
> The pain  
> The burn  
> Under my skin
> 
> Put me to the test  
> I'll prove that I'm strong  
> Won't let myself believe  
> That what we feel is wrong  
> I finally see what  
> You knew was inside me  
> All along
> 
> That behind this soft exterior  
> Lies a warrior
> 
> The pictures come to life  
> Wake in the dead of night  
> Open my eyes  
> I must be dreaming
> 
> Clutch my pillow tight  
> Brace myself for the fight  
> I've heard that seeing  
> Is believing

**** Kylo

_ Don’t become attached. _

_ Don’t become attached. _

_ Don’t become attached. _

The number one rule of being a Jedi or a Sith, he’s neither but still . . .  That rule has been drilled into his head since he was a young boy, still wanting to clutch at his mother’s skirts as his parents said goodbye and sent him to the New Jedi Academy where his uncle’s first rule was for his students to not form any attachments. Snoke didn’t allow attachments either, grumbling that they were weak and would only make you weak.

And yet, here he is, fuming because a girl, a scavenger, declined his offer to rule the galaxy with him. _ Offer? It was more like a proposal, _ he thinks, grimacing at how much worse that makes it. She turned him down flat, leaving him injured, maybe she thought he was dead, with a ship ready to combust around him.

But Kylo can’t get her out of his head. The scavenger, Rey, and her green-flecked hazel eyes seem to be following him around the  _ Finalizer _ as he storms through the halls, trying to get away from the memories of her denial, her rejection.

_ “Don’t go this, Ben,” _ He hears her voice saying, pictures the tears he saw in her eyes,  _ “Please don’t go this way.” _

What other way did she think he would go? What other path could possibly lie before him after all he’s done? She wants to be a Jedi; but does she realize that during the time of the old Jedi if a Jedi was corrupted, if he had been turned to the Dark Side even the slightest, he was to be executed? There was no choice of redemption for them.

And why would there be a chance for him? He’s killed people, lots of people, including his own father. He might not have been involved in the destruction of the Hosnian system, but he was still a part of the order that fired the weapon. He knew about it, he just never cared.

There’s no redemption for him.

Why would he want there to be? Even if he completely turned away from the Dark Side, which would never happen, and he destroyed the First Order all by himself, nobody would welcome Kylo home, not even his mother; she’s surely lost hope in him after all these years.

So, of course, he did the only thing he could think of.  _ Ask her to be your empress, to rule beside you, to bring order to the galaxy with you,  _ The stupid voice in Kylo’s head had said, and he listened, he’d always listened to the voices inside his head.

They’d always been wrong.

But there was no changing that, not now.

“Let the past die,” Kylo mutters under his breath as he sweeps into a random room, some kind of control room, and ignites his lightsaber, watching as the red beam glows brightly in the darkness.

He starts to swing, starts to bring his weapon down on the machinery surrounding him, when he stops.  _ Has that ever gotten you anywhere?  _ A voice asks him, a voice in his head that sounds like it should be familiar but it’s not.

Has it? He’s always so angry, always ready to destroy something, but has destruction ever helped him? Has it ever relieved him of his anger?

No.

He extinguishes the weapon as the answer rings clearly through his head, wondering why he ever started destroying things to release anger in the first place.

That answer rings clear to him too.

Snoke.

He remembers when he was very young, six or seven, and his father had just left on another smuggling run. His mother had to leave him in C3PO’s care, something important had come up with the Senate, and he was so angry - angry that his father had just left him, angry that his mother wasn’t with him when his father had just left him, angry that he was left with C3PO who wouldn’t let him play on the roof - and he heard the voice, that horrible voice, whispering, telling him that he should get back at her, destroy something of hers.

So he destroyed the pretty necklace his father got her for some wretched holiday that celebrated love. It hadn’t made him feel better but while his parents scolded him, the voice praised him and made him feel good about it. Another manipulation, he had played right into Snoke’s hands.

Kylo sighs as he slides down against the wall farthest away from the door and looks at the lightsaber in his hands. He stares at it for a long while, longer than he should admit, when he suddenly hears Rey’s voice.

“I’m not a Jedi,” She says as she materializes in front of him. It looks like she’s sitting on one of the stools the technicians who work these controls must use - or used, it doesn’t look like anyone’s working in here at the moment - and her mouth in tilted downwards in a frown.

He can’t hear anyone’s else’s replies, though he knows there must be a reply. He can only see, only hear, Rey.

She leans back in her chair, crossing her arms over her chest, a troubled expression taking place on her face as she says, “Luke said that it’s time for the Jedi to end. He was the Jedi Master, he must have known what he was talking about.”

Kylo stands and walks over to the center of the room, standing a few feet in front of her, and looks at her, wondering if she can see him.

Her eyes meet his and her frown deepens. She lowers her gaze back to what he assumes is a table and answers an unspoken question, “I don’t even have a lightsaber anymore.”

“Having a little board meeting?” Kylo asks, wondering if she’ll acknowledge him, “I didn’t think there was enough of the terrorists left to do that.”

Rey’s eyes narrow as she shoots a glare at the table before standing and saying, “Excuse me, I think I’ll go meditate.”

She walks away and he follows her. How does this work? How does a Force Bond work? She ducks into a room, he guesses, and he follows, knowing that the room he ducks into a ‘trooper training room. Oh well.

She throws herself into a sitting position, crossing her legs and resting her wrists against her knees, as she closes her eyes and precedes to ignore him.

He sits across from her and stares at her, waiting for her to say something, anything.  _ An apology would be nice, _ he thinks.

Her eyes shoot open immediately and he’s taken aback by the rage he sees there. “‘An apology would be nice,’” She mimics in his deeper-toned, male voice, “Yeah, well, you know what? You don’t get an apology from me. If anything, I deserve an apology from you.”

His eyebrows shoot up his forehead at that. An apology? From him? What did he do? He asks just that and her eyes widen as her mouth drops open.

“What did you do? What did you do?” She asks as if he asked the stupidest question in the world. 

“You were going to let my friends die, Kylo,” She says, going back to his pseudonym. And it . . . hurts to hear that name from her lips after she had been calling him the name of the dead boy he used to be, “You were trying to kill me, on the  _ Millennium Falcon _ . You thought you were going to kill Luke. You attacked the Resistance. You told me - “

She chokes up for a second, her eyes shifting downwards to the floor so she doesn’t have to look at him. “You told me I was nothing, Kylo Ren.”

He can feel her devastation, her feelings of worthlessness, her anger, her disappointment; he feels it all through the bond. And it’s the disappointment that makes him realize that maybe he had hurt her. She came to him with false hopes and instead of turning those hopes down gently he crushed them into the dust. It’s all the other emotions that makes him reach across the small distance between them and place a hand on her knee, not sure if that’s comforting but at least he’s trying. Nobody ever tried to comfort him when he was feeling like this.

And she doesn’t immediately pull away.

He looks up, wanting to see if there’s any disgust on her face because he can’t feel any through their bond, and he sees that she’s staring at his hand with a furrowed brow, as if it’s a bug and she hasn’t decided whether to set it free or smash it.

He won’t ever know what she decides though because he’s sent away, ripped away, from her before she can even choose, and he finds himself sitting on the floor of a ‘trooper training room, reaching out to comfort someone who was never really there.

He clenches his hand into a fist and stands, striding out of the room without glancing back.

_ Don’t become attached. _

_ Don’t become attached. _

_ Don’t become attached. _

He chants this inside his head as he stomps towards his chambers, knowing he can’t be around other people right know, while his heart chants:

_ She let me touch her. _

_ She let me touch her. _

_ She let me touch her. _

And even if it was for the briefest second, even if she was probably going to throw his hand off of her and yell some obscenity in his face, he knows he won’t be able to forget it.

Rey

Rey stares ahead at the wall behind some random Resistance members head, trying to ignore the swirls of conversation surrounding her.

Leia called a meeting an hour ago, saying that they needed to come up with a game plan. An hour later and they still have no idea what they’re going to do.

Some of the members are suggesting they all go home, start recruiting people from their own communities, people they know, people they trust, but others say that they just need to find a new base, somewhere to hunker down while only a few members go on recruiting missions.

Rey doesn’t care.

She’s not exactly a Resistance fighter, she didn’t join when a few of them came to Jakku to try to recruit the scavengers; she didn’t really care about the First Order, didn’t even know who they were. She was brought into this and now she can’t escape it.

Finn - her first friend, the first person who ever came back for her - is here, and now that he’s found Rose Tico, a hardcore Resistance member, there’s no chance he’s leaving, so Rey couldn’t leave even if she wanted to.

She doesn’t want to leave, of course. These people have been good to her, they’ve fed her, and provided her with a bed - a real bed - but she’s not here because of that either. She’s here, in a twisted way, for Ben - no, he’s back to being Kylo to her.

There’s still something good inside of him, there’s still some light; nobody else would ever believe her, nobody would even care, but she feels it,  _ sees _ it, in the Force. That’s not saying that she forgives him . . . but he’s not unforgivable.

Not yet.

She snaps out of her Kylo-thoughts and turns her attention back to the people surrounding her as someone mentions her, saying, “We should send the Jedi out recruiting, people will look at a Jedi with awe. She’ll be something that tells people that we have a chance of winning.”

“I’m not a Jedi,” The words fall out of her mouth before she can stop them, a frown takes its place on her mouth.

Poe, the cocky pilot she met a few days ago after the battle on Crait, says, “Well, you  kind of lifted a whole bunch of rocks with just your mind; that kind of makes you a Jedi.”

Leia snorts. “That is not what makes you a Jedi,” She says, scorn taking place on her features, “apprentices can undergo years of intense training to become Jedi. Rey has had maybe two lessons from my brother, who was probably very cryptic and stubborn if I know him at all.”

Rey wants to argue that she’s had more training, that she could be a Jedi if she wanted to be, but something makes her keep her mouth shut for a second as she thinks, sinking back into her uncomfortable chair and crossing her arms over her chest.

She quietly says, “Luke said that it’s time for the Jedi to end. He was the Jedi Master, he must have known what he was talking about.” He was so sure, so sure. Maybe . . . maybe there’s something else, something a Force-user can be without being a Jedi or a Sith. Something different.

She watches Leia’s eyes, knowing that there’s more than curiosity in those eyes, there’s understanding. Leia knows something. Then she watches as Ben - No, kriff, Kylo - shifts into her view, appearing from seemingly nowhere.

She meets his eyes, seeing something in them that makes her stomach twist painfully, and her frown deepens. She lowers her gaze back to the table. Another person asks her if she would be willing to fight with them, in battles, against Kylo Ren and the words tumble out of her mouth, “I don’t even have a lightsaber anymore.”

Not to mention that she doesn’t want to fight Kylo. She doesn’t want to hurt him, after everything they’ve been through, after what she saw when they touched hands . . .

“Having a little board meeting?” Kylo asks, his voice incredibly sarcastic, “I didn’t think there was enough of the terrorists left to do that.”

Rey’s eyes narrow, she feels like her glare might burn a hole in the table, as she stands and excuses herself.

She walks down the hall, away from the Resistance members who look at her with awe-filled eyes, and the Resistance leader who looks at her with curiosity and understanding, the Resistance leader who’s deranged son is currently following her into her room.

Apparently, Jedi get their own rooms, though it’s not much it’s more than she ever had on Jakku. She scans the room for a second as she walks in, still unbelieving that it’s really hers, even if it’s temporary. She looks over her not-so-freshly made bed and wonders, not for the first time, who crudely carved the small long-tailed bird into the bed’s metal post and why. Then she walks over to the corner of the room, sitting in a meditation-style position.

She closes her eyes, trying to ignore Kylo as he sits across from her. She can smell him though. And Force he smells good, like a mix between that woodsy scent she had so wondrously smelled on Takodana and something smokey.

Then she hears it.

_ An apology would be nice,  _ He says in a sulking voice, but he doesn’t say it. He thinks it, it’s in his mind, and she sees red.

She opens her eyes immediately, watching as his eyes widen only slightly and he leans backwards a bit. “‘An apology would be nice,’” She bites out in his stupidly attrac - no, stupidly deep - voice, “Yeah, well, you know what? You don’t get an apology from me. If anything, I deserve an apology from you.”

She watches as his eyebrows shoot up, knowing he wasn’t expecting that, and she hears him questioning what he did in his head. Idiot, he doesn’t even know what he did wrong. She’s willing to overlook his ignorance until he actually asks what he did. Rey’s eyes widen and her mouth drops open at the stupid question.

“What did you do? What did you do?” She repeats his idiotic question, basically spitting it back at him.

“You were going to let my friends die, Kylo,” She says, hoping that she isn't imagining the little flicker of hurt she sees in his eyes - feels through the bond - when she says ‘Kylo’ instead of ‘Ben’, “You were trying to kill me, on the  _ Millennium Falcon _ . You thought you were going to kill Luke. You attacked the Resistance. You told me - “

She doesn’t even know why it hurts to repeat his words, his words that she supposes he thought were romantic but were really actually a little hurtful, “You told me I was nothing, Kylo Ren.”

She can feel his confusion across the bond; he doesn’t understand how he hurt her, but he knows he hurt her all the same. She doesn’t expect him to do anything. Kylo Ren, Supreme Leader, The Jedi Killer, Master of the Knights of Ren, has probably never comforted anybody a day in his life. He probably doesn’t even know how to comfort anybody.

But then she feels his hand on her knee.

What?

She stares down at it as her eyebrows screw together in puzzlement. Why would he do that? It’s obviously not as comforting as it is confusing, but still . . . he’s trying.

And Rey doesn’t immediately pull away.

She should. Force, she should. But she doesn’t.

She stares down at the hand, waiting for it to reach up and choke her, waiting for it to do something menacing, but it doesn’t. It just sits there, an oddly comforting weight on her knee, while she stares, unsure what to say or do.

She should scramble away. She should call him a monster again. She should slap his hand away. She should punch him in the nose.

All of those ideas scramble into her head, but the hand vanishes before she can’t act on any of them. Its owner vanishes with it.

_ She should have touched him back,  _ Whispers a voice in the back of her head, she should never listen to that voice. It was the one that made her send herself to him. It thinks too much like her heart, to win this war she’ll need to think with her head.

If she can manage that.


	2. Chapter 2

Kylo

Sleeping has always been difficult for Kylo, even when he was a child and he was supposed to be having such wonderful dreams about Wookiee-back rides and looking out at the stars from the  _ Falcon _ ’ _ s _ cockpit as he sits in his father’s lap in the pilot’s seat.

He never had those dreams.

He had dreams of dark creatures curling their tentacles around his arms and legs and pulling him down, down, down into their dark nests, and nobody rescued him because nobody heard his screams. He had dreams of insects, crawling along his skin, biting at him, feasting on his flesh, slowly eating him alive. He had dreams of a man - or a creature - whispering to him, reminding him that his family didn’t care, that they were going to leave him, that they didn’t love him, that nobody loves him.

He’d always awoken from his dreams crying, tears of terror flowing down his face, but he’d only woken his parents once, when he first started having the dreams. His father had let him sleep in their bed, but his mother had been angry, so angry, not at him but at his father for not sending him back to bed.

_“He needs to learn to sleep on his own, Han,”_ He remembers her whispering to his father behind a closed door, he always heard their arguments through the closed doors, _“We can’t keep babying him forever.”_

He didn’t want his parents to argue - he hated their arguments - especially over him, so he kept his dreams to himself, silently suffering at night, quietly fearing sleep. They were always too busy to properly notice the dark circles that had taken root underneath his eyes.

The dreams had only gotten worse as he got older, as he got angrier and his parents grew more distant, and he only slept less.

Of course, waking up in the middle of the night to find his uncle, mentor, and Master standing over him with a menacing expression and an ignited saber in his hands did absolutely nothing to make his nightmares any better.

Now, as an adult, he can barely sleep for more than a few hours, two or three at the most, at a time, even in the most comfortable bed the First Order could offer their Supreme Leader, even as days of exhaustion from working on paperwork, trying to calm the order’s High Command, and dealing with Hux, weigh down on him, he cannot sleep.

He tosses and turns in his bed, the sheets tucked snugly around his waist, leaving his chest bare, the way he likes it. He just can’t.

He finally sighs and almost stands from bed when he hears a soft noise. He turns on his side and finds Rey sleeping in his bed.

His eyes widen before he realizes that it’s the Force Bond. She had denied his request, so why else would she be in his bed?

He watches her for a second, wondering how she can sleep that easily, when she turns over. Her eyes - he sees now that they were open - find his in the darkness and she says nothing. She just watches him, something shifting behind those round eyes.

“You can’t sleep?” He asks, his voice coming out dry and rough; he hasn’t had anything to drink for hours, maybe since breakfast actually, and it shows.

She’s silent for a moment and then she says, “My bed is too comfortable, I’m used to a hammock.”

He nods solemnly, understanding that completely. He remembers seeing the hammock she had called a bed when he looked inside her head during his interrogation of her, it hadn’t looked that comfy. “You could try sleeping on the floor,” He offers.

She yawns before explaining, “I thought about that, but I realized that if I just kept sleeping on the floor I’d never get used to sleeping on a bed and I would like to be able to sleep in one in the future so . . . “ She trails off, probably realizing that she’s talking about sleeping habits with her enemy.

_ I didn’t have to be her enemy,  _ He thinks sulkily, hoping she doesn’t hear it through the bond.

“Why can’t you sleep?” She asks, staring down at his hand, which he realizes is now resting flat between them.

He almost doesn’t answer. He almost tells her to mind her own business. And then she looks up at him, her hazel eyes shining with curiosity, and he wonders how he could ever resist her questions. “I have nightmares.”

She frowns, sympathy washes across the bond, and he sees it, through the bond. She used to have nightmares all the time. She used to deal with them alone, in her broken down AT-AT, but while he had the luxury of being able to cry about these dreams, she couldn’t; it was a waste of water, such a precious resource on Jakku.

He moves the hand that rests between them, resting it on her shoulder and giving it a squeeze. “I’m sorry,” He whispers.

She looks at his hand, much like she did yesterday when he put a hand on her knee, but this time she covers his hand with hers and says, “Thank you.”

Kylo watches her for a second longer, ideas pushing themselves into his head, before he finally says, “Turn around.”

She frowns, her brows pulling down in confusion. “Why?”

He huffs, of course she has to be stubborn. “Just do it.”

She rolls her eyes and turns around, so her back is facing him, and asks, “What now?”

He scoots closer to her, so his body is only about an inch away from hers, and wraps an arm around her waist. “Hey!” She starts to yell, starts to move.

“Rey,” He says calmly, “I’m just trying to see if this might help. If you don’t fall asleep quickly, then you can punch me in the face or whatever else it is you want to do to me.”

She huffs before settling back down, scooting back so they’re even closer together than they were. “Fine.”

He then slides an arm underneath her head, hoping to be a not-as-soft pillow but still softer than a hammock, maybe it’ll be close enough for her to fall asleep.

Her breathing doesn’t even out as quickly as he thought it would, if anything he thinks her heart feels like it’s racing against the arm he has wrapped around her. So he starts to hum a lullaby his mother used to sing him.

He doesn’t know if she falls asleep though because soon after he starts humming, his eyelids start drooping, the tune comes to a soft stop as he falls asleep.

Rey

Her heart is racing, he’s holding her, his arm around her waist. Her back to his chest. It’s so much, it’s too much. Or is it? Maybe it’s just enough.

He starts humming. She almost doesn’t notice it, it’s so soft and such an unexpected sound coming from a man that normally makes people scream in pain or whimper in terror.

The tune stops on a soft note and she feels almost cheated, she wants to know how the sad tune ends. She wishes she knew the words.

She wishes he wasn’t the first person to ever sing - well, hum - her a lullaby.

She turns around in his arms, hoping she doesn’t jostle him; his confession earlier about having nightmares made a little bit of her heart crack, she remembers being desperate to sleep at night, scared of having to face terrors even when she should be at peace.

He doesn’t wake as she faces him, watching in sleep. He looks . . . calmer. He looks at peace. He looks younger, like he doesn’t have the weight of the world on his shoulders. His eyes flicker behind his eyelids and she wishes she knew what he’s dreaming about, if he’s dreaming about something.

His brow crinkles as she starts to turn around and she freezes. She wants to reach out and smooth the crinkle away, wants him to go back to being calm and content. She starts to reach out when he rolls on top of her.

_ That’s it, _ Rey thinks, _ I’ve done it. He’s going to crush me because I tried to touch his face. _

But he  _ doesn’t. _

When Rey reopens her eyes, she finds that he’s buried his head in her chest and wrapped both arms around her waist, holding her tightly against him; well, under him.

_ It’s not exactly the worst position, _ Rey thinks, then her cheeks heat up at the realization of what she just thought. It’s not the worst position to be underneath Ben - Ugh, Kylo.

He is warm though . . .

“Kriff,” Rey whispers as she realizes that his full weight is on her, “he weighs more than a bantha,” he shifts and Rey realizes that her whisper might have woken someone who claims to not be able to sleep, but all he does is shove his leg between hers.

“You had to be a cuddler,” Rey mumbles irritably, but she finds her eyelids drooping as she says it.

* * *

 

Rey wakes up alone in her own bed on the  _ Millennium Falcon _ , shivering after falling asleep under something warm and solid.

She starts to get ready, pulling on a tunic and a pair of pants. Her boots aren’t exactly a necessity on the  _ Falcon _ , but if everybody walked around without shoes on they would be in trouble. Some of these people have awful smelling feet.

When she steps out her room Poe immediately walks up to her. “Leia was wondering if you’d accompany me to the surface of this planet, Atollon, while the others fuel up the ship.”

Rey frowns. Why would Leia ask that? “Why?”

“Recruitment,” Poe replies with a cheery smile, “You in?”

And how can she say no? She has to do something for the Resistance, if she’s not going to be a Jedi for them.

“Sure,” Rey answers, “What’s the planet like?”

Poe grimaces. “It’s a desert planet.”

On the inside, Rey’s saying, “No, not another desert planet. I was trapped on Jakku long enough.” On the outside, Rey says, “Alright, let’s go.”

Poe didn’t lie about it being a desert planet, but it’s a lot better than Jakku. It looks like people actually have jobs here, and food and water. Hardly anybody looks like they’re starving, and when they do people seem to want to help them, at least a little.

Rey watches in amazement as people zip around, buying things with credits, eating food, drinking water, just because they can.

Poe doesn’t seem to see anything amazing, but this looks like heaven to Rey.

She’s about to ask Poe where they should start recruiting when he points to a tavern. “Here.”

Rey frowns at it. “You want to recruit people for the Resistance in a tavern?”

Poe nods and starts to walk in but Rey catches his jacket sleeve. “Don’t we want people who are like, I don’t know, not bad influences?”

Poe raises a brow. “I was recruited in a tavern, Rey.”

“Oh,” She says dumbly and watches as he starts to walk in again, “you go on in alone, I’ll wait out here.”

“You sure?” He asks, looking at her with a frown tilting his lips.

She nods. Rey doesn’t like drunk people, especially drunken men. The other female scavengers in Niima used to tell her terrible stories about what could happen when a women found herself alone with a drunken male and couldn’t defend themselves.

Rey always carries her staff for a reason.

Then there’s also what her parents are, were, that makes her pause when she looks at the tavern. She recalls Kylo’s words, “ _ Drunkards, sold you off drinking money, buried in a pauper’s grave _ .”

Yeah, Rey doesn’t like drunk people.

She waits outside, leaning against the tavern’s dusty stone wall, watching the people. It feels like forever when Poe finally walks out and spreads out his hands around him as if to gesture, “Well at least I tried.”

And Rey nods, sighs, as if she expected anything else.

She starts to suggest that they leave, try somewhere else, when a commotion arises. A man is yelling, running through the crowd and pushing people aside as he chases after someone. Rey watches with curious eyes as he corners the someone.

She hears a little girl’s high-pitched scream and takes off running, leaving Poe yelling after her by the Tavern’s door.

She reaches the man and finds him crowded over a little Iktotchi girl, holding a knife to the top of one of the two down-turned horns that protrude from her head. The girl is dressed in scraps, worn in clothes with holes showing her light pink skin underneath.

She’s holding an apple in her hand.

“Little thief,” The man sneers, “you took my apple, I’ll take your - “

“Step away from the kid,” Rey says, not even recognizing the hard edge in her voice, “ _ now. _ ”

The man turns to find the voice and finds her, in a sea of dozens of people she’s the only one who spoke out before he could mutilate a little girl. “The thief stole an apple from my cart, thieves lose limbs around here.”

Some people in the crowd cheer, others mumble under their breath.

Rey swings her staff out around from her back, pointing it towards the man. “You touch the girl, and I  _ will _ take you down.”

She doesn’t know where this sudden fierceness is coming from, maybe it’s that she hates people like this, maybe it’s because she feels connected to this little girl because of her own experiences, maybe it’s that she wishes someone had stuck up for her when she was younger.

Maybe it’s that she feels the Force emanating from this girl so strongly that she wonders how she didn’t sense her in the crowd before all the commotion.

The man leans forward, ignoring her, about to saw through the girl’s horn when Rey pulls a little bit of the Force into her voice, commanding, “You will step away from the child and go back to your cart,” She watches as the little girl clutches the stolen apple tighter to her chest, Rey adds, “You will leave the apple with her as an apology for your behavior.”

The man steps away from the girl, repeating what Rey said, and walks back to his cart, the crowd dispersing with him.

Rey tucks the staff back onto her back and steps forward, towards the little girl, and holds out a hand peacefully. The little girl looks up at her with awe in her wide blue eyes.

“I’m Rey,” Rey introduces herself, holding her hand out for a handshake.

The girl looks at her hand then at the apple then back to Rey’s hand before reaching forward and shaking Rey’s hand with a trembling one of her own. “What’s your name?” Rey asks.

“Kyilre,” The little girl answers in a small, sweet voice. “Thank you for - “

Rey waves off her gratitude. “I grew up on a planet like this, meanie-heads are everywhere and surprisingly easy to deal with when you have the Force.”

Kyilre frowns. “I thought the Force was a myth.”

Rey shakes her head, remembering when she had thought the same thing only a few weeks ago. “I thought so too,” Rey says, chewing on her lip as an idea pops into her head, an idea that could be completely terrible, or completely amazing.

“Do you have any parents?” Rey asks.

Kyilre shakes her head. “Orphan, since before I can remember.”

Rey nods, another strange kinship to this young girl. “Would you like to come with me?” Rey asks just as Poe arrives behind her.

“Rey, you can’t just go running off like that - “

The little girl throws her arms around Rey and buries her head in Rey’s stomach. “Yes, thank you, thank you.”

Rey gives the girl her hand and starts walking back towards the ship.

“Rey, what are you doing?”

Rey doesn’t turn back to face Poe as she says, “I found us a new member.”


End file.
